


the impossible is possible tonight

by thesaddestboner



Series: Author's Favorites [21]
Category: Hockey RPF, Women's Hockey RPF
Genre: F/F, Ghosts, Possession, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9028768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: Amanda sees her first ghost on the eve of her tenth birthday.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taxingme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxingme/gifts).



> I actually started a totally different fic before settling on this idea. This doesn't exactly fit any of your prompts, I don't think. Apparently, I interpreted your letter to mean "will read about college-era psychic Amanda who sees ghosts and has a crush on Hilary!" I hope you enjoy it anyway, [**taxingme**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/taxingme/profile)!
> 
> Many thanks to [**blastellanos**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/profile) for the last minute beta.
> 
> Crossley Building doesn't actually exist.
> 
> Title from "Tonight, Tonight," by the Smashing Pumpkins.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

Amanda sees her first ghost on the eve of her tenth birthday. It’s—she’s?—tissue-paper thin, like a wisp of smoke, with long, lank hair and sunken pits where her eyes should be. And, Amanda thinks, she’d once been a little girl. The apparition is wearing an old-fashioned nightgown with lace trim on the collar, cuffs, and hem. The spirit has a dark ring of bruises around her pale neck like a ribbon that Amanda doesn’t want to think too much about.

Amanda tugs her blanket up to her chin and manages not to cry out, even though she wants to. Everything is so cold, like she’s just been dunked in ice-cold water. Amanda wants to yell because she knows Blake and Phil would come see what’s the matter. They’d make the ghost girl go away. 

The spirit seems to be watching her, even with those eyeless black sockets. Amanda feels like she’s being sized up by a prizefighter. 

“What’s your name?” she whispers.

The spirit hovers in the doorway. She doesn’t respond to Amanda’s question. Instead, she draws her fingers over her mouth, and pantomimes twisting a key in a lock and tossing it away. 

“Did—did someone hurt you?” Amanda whispers, feeling stupid. Of course someone hurt her, or else she wouldn’t be dead. And she definitely wouldn’t have a ring of fingerprint-sharped bruises around her skinny little neck. 

The ghost flickers and winks out like static snow on a TV set. 

***

Amanda doesn’t see any more ghosts again until she’s nineteen. She’s just moved to Duluth for her freshman year of college. Her roommates all play hockey on the women’s team, like Amanda, and have spent the last half hour trying to convince Tara, another freshman, that their dorm is haunted. 

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Tara insists, glancing at Amanda for support. Amanda just shrugs at her. 

Meg and Lian, their older roommates, share a gleefully conspiratorial _look_ , devious smiles alighting their round, pretty faces, before turning on Tara. Amanda watches from the doorway, nursing a beer. Oddly, she’s been left out of this demonstration. Maybe they can sense something in her. Or maybe they’ve just realized she’s not easily led like poor Tara is.

“There’ve been ghost sightings on campus going as far back as the Civil War era,” Meg says, rounding on Tara like a dog that’s picked up a scent. “In this very dorm, in fact.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tara says.

“The spirits won’t be happy to hear that,” Lian says in a spooky voice.

Amanda rolls her eyes and swallows down a laugh along with a swig of her beer. 

“You don’t wanna piss off the ghosts, Tara,” Amanda sing-songs, as she crosses the room to toss her empty can in the trash next to the door.

Tara scowls at her, eyebrows caterpillaring across her forehead. Amanda raises her eyebrows at Tara in what she hopes is a perfect picture of innocence.

“C’mon, girls,” Lian announces, getting off her bunk bed and clapping her hands at Tara. “Time to meet some fucking ghosts.”

 

 

 

They trek across campus to dilapidated old Crossley Building, which is said to be haunted. Haunted by whom, Amanda isn’t sure. The building certainly looks the part, with its boarded up windows, loosened shingles, and a crumbling stone walkway that leads up to the front door. Light peeks out through crack in a wooden two-by-four that’s been seemingly haphazardly nailed over one of the windows on the second floor.

Amanda hefts her six-pack of beer against her chest and stares up at the single line of buttery yellow light peering down at them from that second-story window. A shiver runs down the back of her neck, under the collar of her sweatshirt, and down her spine.

“Scared yet?” Lian crows, yanking the six-pack out of Amanda’s hands to claim a beer for herself.

Amanda jerks the six-pack away from her. “Of course not. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Frosh go first. It’s tradition,” Meg crows from the porch, mittened hands cupped around her mouth. 

Lian gives Amanda a prod in the back as she relieves her of the beer. “Go on, Mandy!”

Amanda and Tara glance at each other before starting up the creaking wooden steps to where Meg’s waiting.

Meg pulls a tarnished brass key out of her pocket and shoves it in Amanda’s hands.

“What’s this for?” Amanda looks down at it and turns it. There’s an inscription on the key’s bow, but it’s too faded for her to make it out. She shoves it in her pocket.

“It’s for the attic. Where you two are gonna spend the night,” Meg announces, tossing a grin over Amanda’s head at Lian.

Amanda hears Lian crack open another beer and she bristles. “I’m not spending a night in the attic.”

“You’re a freshman. You do what we tell you,” Meg sneers, skipping down the steps, pausing long enough to shove Amanda toward the door.

Amanda sighs, realizing she and Tara have no choice.

“I don’t want to do this. I’m going back,” Tara says

Meg grabs her by the arm before she can leave and shoves her toward Amanda. “It’s not like you have a choice. It’ll be fine,” she says, in an overly solicitous tone. The smile she flashes at Amanda makes her blood curdle. “Me and Lian’ll take you to Denny’s for breakfast if you make it through the night.”

“Don’t be chicken,” Lian taunts.

“Let’s just do it. It’ll be fine,” Amanda says, grabbing Tara’s hand and pulling at her. “They’re just trying to get you worked up.”

“Fine, fine.” Tara jerks her hand away from Amanda and storms into the house.

Amanda follows, reaching into her pocket and feeling for the key.

 

 

 

The attic is not as bad as Amanda was expecting. She _was_ expecting cobwebs, mouse droppings, broken floorboards, but the previous owner had installed drywall and carpet. There’s a mini-fridge in the corner, stocked with some bottled water, and Meg and Lian had left some blankets and pillows behind for the two of them.

Tara collapses on one of the blankets with a sigh. “I guess this isn’t so bad.”

“Yeah. I told you it’d be fine,” Amanda says, sitting on the other blanket. “I was expecting, like… You know, mice. Bats, maybe.”

Tara wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

There’s a broken chair with three legs and an old-fashioned kerosene lamp sitting next to it. Amanda goes over and inspects the lamp, realizing it’s not a kerosene lamp at all; rather, it’s just a regular lamp fashioned to look like a kerosene lamp. Amanda finds an outlet and plugs the lamp in. The pale yellow light flickers, casting shadows on the opposite wall. This must have been the light Amanda had seen through the crack in the wooden plank nailed over the window.

“I don’t have any cell reception,” Tara announces with a sad sigh.

Amanda pulls out her phone and taps at the screen. “Neither do I.”

“I bet they turned off the wi-fi or something. Bitches,” Tara mutters.

Amanda laughs. “I don’t think a place like this has wi-fi.”

“Hey, did you see that?” Tara throws out a hand, grabbing Amanda by the arm.

“What?”

“I thought I saw something skitter across the floor. Like, maybe a mouse or something,” Tara says, letting go of Amanda.

“Mice won’t hurt you if you don’t bother them,” Amanda says. She’s hardly an expert on mice, though. 

The light from the lamp starts flickering like a guttering flame before completely sputtering out.

“What the…” Tara jerks her blanket to her chest in a futile protective gesture.

Amanda feels a chill wash over her like an ice bath. She feels the hairs on her arms stand, and static electricity crackles in her ears. 

“Lian, Meg, this isn’t funny,” Amanda yells.

Something thumps noisily against the roof. It’s probably just the broken shingles, Amanda tells herself.

“Fuck them, and fuck this shit,” Tara hisses, kicking away her blanket and getting to her feet. “I’m out of here.”

The door to the attic swings open—I thought I locked that, Amanda thinks—and there’s someone standing in the entry. A shadowy figure the shape and size of a girl about their age. Something starts rattling and it takes Amanda a few seconds before she realizes it’s her, it’s her teeth chattering from the cold.

Amanda gets slowly to her feet. “Lian? Meg?”

The figure glides over the threshold. Its toes barely graze the floor.

The apparition extends an arm. The sleeve of its nightgown slips down, revealing fingerprint-shaped bruises on its wrist, and Amanda realizes she’s seen her before.

“It’s you,” she says.

The spirit lifts her head. Her eyes are unseeing shadowy sockets, and her lips are pale and chapped. 

Amanda inches her hand out tentatively, pausing for a moment, before reaching for the ghost’s hand.

“Amanda, what are you doing?” Tara gasps.

The ghost passes through her like smoke and everything suddenly goes black.

When Amanda is herself again, she’s lying on one of the blankets, staring up at the vaulted attic ceiling. There’s a noise like the dripping of a faucet in the distance. Everything aches, feels like she’s taken about fifty rough body checks, and she’s still so cold. Amanda touches her face with stiff, frozen fingers.

She sits up slowly, joints creaking. Then she sees Tara, cowering in the corner of the attic. And Amanda is there, huddled with her.

“Tara,” Amanda calls out. Her voice sounds like an echo, a reverberation.

It’s so cold. Why is it so cold?

Tara doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look at her. She just clings to—to Amanda and trembles in the corner. Amanda—her body?—opens her eyes, and everything clicks into place.

Amanda closes her eyes and wishes—

_I want to be somewhere safe—_

_I want to be—_

—and when she opens her eyes, she’s… She’s not home. She’s not with Phil and Blake, Mom and Dad. Amanda is standing in the middle of some unfamiliar bedroom, standing over a sleeping figure in an unfamiliar bed.

The person startles awake all of a sudden and throws out a hand, snapping on the light at the side of their bed.

“Hilary,” Amanda gasps. 

Somehow, some way, she ended up in her USA teammate’s bedroom. Hilary pushes a curtain of brown hair out of her face and blinks at Amanda like she’s a too-bright light.

Frigging ghosts, Amanda thinks, somewhat spitefully.

Hilary just stares at her, fingers curled loosely in a fuzzy blue blanket. Or, more accurately, stares at the space where Amanda is currently standing but doesn’t actually _see_ Amanda. 

Why did I end up here? Amanda wonders, as she looks around and takes in her surroundings. Hilary has framed pictures all over her walls of goals she’s scored, the different teams she’s been a part of. It’s all a little narcissistic, but kind of charming too.

“Wh-who’s there?” Hilary calls out, haltingly.

Well, here goes nothing.

“It’s me, Amanda!” 

Hilary reaches under her bed, scrabbles for something, and comes up with a baseball bat. “I know karate.”

Amanda scoffs, inching closer to the end of Hilary’s bed. “No, you don’t.”

Hilary grips the bat in her hands and holds it in front of her. Her hands tremble ever so slightly. “What are you?”

Amanda stops shuffling across Hilary’s soft carpet. “You can see me?”

“Of course I can see you. And, well, I can see through you too,” Hilary says, lowering the bat.

Amanda raises her hands and, sure enough, they’re translucent. She can see a tracery of light blue veins through the papery white skin. She can also see Hilary’s gawping face through her hands, too.

“I’m… I don’t know what I am, actually,” Amanda says, hastily shoving her see-through hands in her pockets. Which are also see-through. 

Kind of defeats the purpose of shoving them in her pockets, she supposes.

“Did you… Are you…” Hilary lets the bat roll out of her hands and thunk onto the floor.

“Dead? I don’t think so,” Amanda says. “I mean. I saw my body. It—my body—didn’t look to be dead. Just…unconscious.”

“Wow,” Hilary breathes. She kicks off the covers and clambers out of bed to stand by Amanda’s side. “This is heavy.”

Hilary lifts her hand and passes it through Amanda’s chest. Amanda shimmers and ripples like heat rising from the pavement on a hot summer day. It doesn’t feel like anything at all and she’s kind of disappointed. Amanda had been hoping she’d be able to feel _something_ the first time Hilary ever touched her. 

“So, yeah,” Amanda says. “When this was all happening, I just wished to be somewhere safe and, well. I ended up here.”

“I’m your safe place,” Hilary says, her voice doing this breathy little hitch that makes something twist in Amanda’s chest like a key in a lock.

“I guess you are.” Amanda tries to put her see-through hands on Hilary, but—as expected—Amanda’s hands just pass right though her. “This kinda sucks. I can’t even, like, touch you or hold you or anything.” Amanda sighs and just lets her ghost hands hover over Hilary’s shoulders.

“It kind of tickles. Like you’re blowing cold air on my skin,” Hilary says, lifting her hands again. She raises them and splays them out over where Amanda’s are hovering over her shoulders.

“You can feel the cold, but you can’t feel me.” Amanda leans in a little closer and blows cold ghosty breath across her lips. Hilary’s damp brown hair flutters against her cheek.

“I felt _that_.” Hilary closes her eyes and brushes her lips very near Amanda’s. “And your breath. I can—it’s so cold. Are you totally _sure_ you’re not a ghost?”

Amanda concentrates all of the energy she has left—all the energy she’s not burning doing whatever it is ghosts do—and imagines it spiraling into a fixed point on a map. A map that leads right to Hilary. Something burns where her heart should be, like an ember of dying light. Hilary’s hands grow warm under hers.

When Hilary moves closer, Amanda feels her breath—warm, faintly minty—blow across her lips. Then she feels Hilary’s lips against her own, pressing gently. Amanda presses back, parting her lips to deepen the kiss. Hilary’s hands slide over her cheeks, and her fingers are points of warmth against Amanda’s cool skin. The points of pressure start to get more and more solid and so, so warm. 

Then Hilary’s arm is around Amanda’s neck, pulling her closer, until she thumps solidly against Hilary’s chest. She gives a gentle tug and Amanda follows her back until they fall onto Hilary’s bed. Hilary rolls away from her and stares up at the ceiling. Amanda wonders if she’s having a freak-out moment. 

“Can ghosts do… You know…” Hilary waggles her fingers over Amanda’s boobs. 

Amanda props herself up on her elbow. “For one, I’m not a ghost. And secondly, I don’t know. Maybe we should find out.” She slides a hand slowly up Hilary’s thigh, watching until her pale, ghostly fingers disappear under the bottom of her t-shirt. 

Hilary closes a hand around Amanda’s, pulling it out from under her shirt so she can ruck it up over her head. Hilary’s bared skin puckers in gooseflesh.

“I’ve had a crush on you since training camp,” Amanda admits, playing with the hem of Hilary’s t-shirt. 

Hilary laughs, a tinkling of bells. She responds with another kiss. A soft press of lips, minty and cool.

Amanda skates her fingers over Hilary’s stomach, drags a fingertip over the curve of her breast. Hilary’s hands go wandering, catching in Amanda’s sweatshirt and pulling it over her head. Amanda sheds the rest of her clothes, and helps Hilary out of her shorts. Amanda tangles their bare legs together and lets her fingers trace the curves and lines of Hilary’s body. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Hilary mutters into the top of Amanda’s head.

“Me too.” 

Amanda lets her eyes close for a moment, lost in the warmth of Hilary’s body, Hilary’s mouth moving in her hair in the shape of a kiss. She does feel safe and warm here, with Hilary’s arms around her. Hilary’s fingers tip her chin up and then they’re kissing again, minty cool perfection.

“Are you—are you gonna remember this once you’re back in your own body?” Hilary asks against her lips.

“I don’t know,” Amanda admits, surging up to kiss the corner of Hilary’s mouth. “I don’t want to go back.”

“You kinda have to. We need you on the ice,” Hilary says, with a rueful little laugh. She licks lightly at Amanda’s lips.

“I hate this.” Amanda burrows herself in Hilary’s embrace.

“Mm?”

“That I have to go back. That I might not remember this,” she says.

Hilary hums thoughtfully for a moment. Then she reaches up, unclasps the gold chain from around her neck, and drapes it around Amanda’s. Amanda feels Hilary’s blunt fingernails at the back of her neck as she clasps the chain in place. 

“There,” Hilary says, smoothing her fingers over the locket that now dangles between Amanda’s breasts. 

Amanda plucks the locket from her, flips it open, and peers down at it. “You really have your own celly in a locket,” she says.

Hilary’s chest flushes a deep red that rises slowly until it colors her cheeks. “Nothing wrong with being proud of yourself,” she says.

“No, you’re right.” Amanda closes the locket and kisses her again.

Hilary grins against her mouth. “I always am.”

When Amanda pulls back, she—

—opens her eyes to a vaulted ceiling and pale, flickering yellow light. She hears a distant sound and it takes her a few seconds to realize it’s muffled crying. Amanda sits up slowly and shakes off the cobwebs. Memories and images flicker and flit before her, but she can’t latch onto any of them. She has no idea what’s happened. 

Tara is huddled in the corner, shaking and crying into the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Tara,” Amanda croaks.

“Nonononono—”

Amanda clears her throat. “ _Tara_.”

Tara lowers her trembling hands. “Amanda? I thought you were—I thought you were _dead_!”

“What happened?” she asked, pressing the heel of her hand against her forehead. Her skull throbs with the remnants of a migraine, and her entire body aches. 

“I—I don’t know!” Tara rubs at her wet eyes. “There was a ghost. You reached out and touched it, and then… Then… You just fell. I thought you really were dead.”

Amanda shakes her head slowly. Her lips tingle and she brings her fingertips to the corner of her mouth. 

“No… I don’t know what happened.”

Tara shoots out a hand for Amanda’s neck and she jumps, as Tara’s fingers grab at a chain around her neck.

“You didn’t have this before,” Tara insists, pulling the chain out from under the collar of her sweatshirt. “Where did this come from?”

Amanda lifts up the locket on the chain and flicks it open with her thumbnail. She stares at the image and her lips and fingertips tingle.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, touching her lips again. “I don’t know.”

***

Amanda still sees ghosts here and there, but it doesn’t become a regular thing. A lot of the time, she doesn’t see people. Sometimes she sees horses pulling empty carriages down streets choked with Model T’s, Edsels, and accordioned muscle cars. One time in anatomy class, she walked into the room to find a pale, blue-lipped, loose-jointed figure dangling from a metal stand in place of their model skeleton. That was inconvenient, to say the least. She’d spent most of that class distracted by the dead man hanging from the metal stand and unable to explain why she couldn't pay attention to the lectures.

Sometimes she sees ghosts on the ice too. Ghost girls in matching sweaters and long woolen skirts, tearing down the ice to take shots against Terry Sawchuk and Georges Vézina. Helmetless phantoms, their sweaters speckled or downright drenched in blood, facing off against broken men with slashed necks, mangled bodies, and frozen limbs.

It gets hard sometimes, having to see all of them. 

She just breaks down one night during a pre-season tournament. There's a little girl in the stands. One that looks a lot like the little girl who first showed herself to Amanda on the eve of her tenth birthday. This girl has bruises and scars and a leg that juts out at an unnatural angle. 

Amanda just can't take it. She tears off the ice, frantic for some place to hide. 

Knighter finds her crying into her hands in a corner, next to an out-of-order hotel ice machine. 

“Kess? You okay?”

The concern in Knighter’s voice just makes Amanda cry even harder. How could she ever explain any of this? She can’t even talk to her parents, or Phil and Blake about it. Every time she tries, she chokes up. Her words run as dry as her palms are sweaty, and she can’t get anything out. 

“I’m fine,” Amanda mutters, rubbing her achy, wet eyes on the sleeve of her jersey. 

“You want me to get Coach—”

“Don’t! I said I’m fine,” Amanda says, a little louder, a little meaner than she intends to. She uncurls from her spot next to the ice machine and drags the sleeves of her jersey down over her hands. 

Knighter sighs. “Look, I know you’re not fine. Just let me…” She leans in, patting Amanda awkwardly on the back.

The gesture is almost comforting. 

Amanda sniffs and wipes her snotty nose on her sleeve. “Thanks, Knighter.”

Knighter pauses, hand stilling on the middle of Amanda’s back. “Where’d you get that?”

“What?” Amanda jerks her head up and just misses bashing Knighter in the chin with the top of her skull. 

“This necklace.” Knighter taps a creamsicle-orange fingernail against the locket Amanda’s worn around her neck since a very strange night her first year at Minnesota.

“I don’t remember. Someone gave it to me freshman year, I think,” she says. Amanda hasn’t looked at the locket—or in the locket—in years. She doesn’t even remember what’s in it, or even if there _is_ anything in it.

“This is mine,” Knighter says. “It has my initials on the front. It disappeared years ago.”

Amanda glances down at it. **HAK** is etched on the front in fancy script. She can’t believe she never noticed it before. Amanda closes her fingers around the locket protectively.

The locket burns in her hand and Amanda lets go of it, shaking her hand out. Flashes of long-buried memories flicker just beyond her grasp. The tingle of lips against lips. Hands in her hair. Fingers skating along her spine. A reed-thin ghost girl with a ring of bruises around her neck. 

Hilary. _Hilary_ in bed with her, tangled with Amanda and that fuzzy blue blanket. Hilary kissing her. Hilary and her pale pink walls covered with her own pictures and memorabilia. Amanda remembers the weight of Hilary’s arms around her.

“You gave it to me,” Amanda finally says. 

Hilary furrows her brow and frowns, pulling away from Amanda. “I don’t remember that.”

“Neither did I.” Amanda feels like a light’s gone on upstairs. Like wooden planks have been pulled away from shuttered windows. “Hilary, can I kiss you?”

Hilary stares at her. “Um, fuck yeah? I dunno what brought this on but I am _always_ down for getting k—”

“Shut up, Knighter.” Amanda wraps her arms around Hilary and brings their mouths together. 

It’s not a perfect kiss—Hilary uses too much teeth and more tongue than Amanda remembers—and somehow, that’s what makes it perfect. It’s Hilary and Amanda. How could it be anything but perfect?

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Searching for something that I can't reach](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14220867) by [F1DEL1US](https://archiveofourown.org/users/F1DEL1US/pseuds/F1DEL1US)




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